


california dreamin’ (all the leaves are brown)

by Metronomeblue



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid
Genre: Autistic Hannah Foster, California, Catharsis, Ethan Dies, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hatchetfield Survives AU, Road Trips, Tom and Becky adopt the Fosters because I said so, idk what this is anymore, she’s BABY
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:40:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24450724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metronomeblue/pseuds/Metronomeblue
Summary: “Just think on it, okay?” Tom asked, in the same low murmur. Lex nodded, swallowing. He pretended not to notice the wet of her eyes, and she pretended not to notice the way his hand lingered on the door frame like he didn’t want to leave them there. He patted it, reassuring, as if to tell it he was coming back. As if to tell them.Lex stood up and did a loop of the trailer.A home. A real fucking home.
Relationships: Background Tom Houston/Becky Barnes, Lex Foster & Ethan Green, Lex Foster & Hannah Foster, Lex Foster & Tom Houston, Past Lex Foster/Ethan Green
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32





	california dreamin’ (all the leaves are brown)

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out to be not what I intended it to be??? Somehow it’s mostly about Lex coming to terms with her new reality which,,, okay. Fine. I guess.

Tom visited her at work, and wasn’t that a joke, that she still had work? The mall burned down, but they needed people to help comb through it for salvageable merchandise, bodies, anything. It should’ve been a volunteer job, but there weren’t enough volunteers, so they started offering minimum wage. Lex signed up. She needed the money, and like fuck did she want to be home all day. It wasn’t like she was getting help from anyone else, now that Ethan was dead.

People kept saying he was “gone.” Bullshit. Lex’s dad was “gone.” Ethan was  _ dead _ . Dead people rarely left you on purpose. People who were gone almost always chose to go. Lex stabbed her shovel harder into the ash, glad once more for the thick mask over her face. Her eyes watered, though, and she wished, futilely, for goggles. She wondered, for a moment, if Ethan would have left on his own if he hadn’t died. She decides he wouldn’t have. He’s dead. She figures she gets the final vote. The ash is like that kinetic sand bullshit she sold to kids all the time. It’s softer than sand, but it doesn’t move like dirt. It’s a light, fluffy powder. It feels like being choked every time she takes her mask off.

Every so often she finds a corpse, and she has to flag it and move on so the officials can take it. She prays she never finds Ethan. That would kill her, maybe. She’s strong. She is. But she wouldn’t know how to handle that. It was bad enough just knowing, but to see it, to be confronted with it. That’s too much. It’s too much.

So Tom visited her at work. 

He looked better. He looked better every time she saw him, really, like a man with hope in his eyes. Becky, too. She looked vibrant when Lex and Hannah went to see them, glowing pink and gold with happiness. Lex was happy for them, in a way she wasn’t usually happy for other people. Maybe because unlike other people, she knew they deserved it. Unlike other people, they were good. They cared. They helped, when help was needed. Lex wasn’t always around when Hannah went to see them, but Hannah was smart. She knew to call from a pay phone and tell Lex before she got off work. 

It meant Lex could go pick her up, maybe get a ride home from Tom or Becky- whoever was less tired- if she felt good enough to take them up on it. She felt better most days now, less stuck with pride and hostility. More willing to accept that the two of them cared for the two of them, that they gave a shit about her and Hannah. They did, too. She knew that. More than a lot of things, she knew that, now. Things were different. 

She was signed up to go back to school in spring, and so was Tom. It was weird, thinking about it. Thinking of pretending things were normal, pretending that there weren’t fucking air raids some nights, that they couldn’t hear the sirens blaring out in the darkness over Hatchetfield. Pretending that there was never a mall, never an Ethan, never a Wiggly. Pretending there was never a Moscow, before it became a crater on the map. “Weird.” Maybe  _ terrifying _ would be a better word.

Tom was waiting by the door when she left her shift. She waved. He smiled. 

“You mind if I stop by your mom’s trailer tomorrow?” He asked, not looking at her, in that slow, drawling, awkward way that meant he was about to be really nice to her. 

“Sure,” Lex shrugged, brushing ash from her cheeks where the mask didn’t cover. “She’s going to be a real bitch about it, though.”

“Nah,” he said, nodding. “I’ll be quick. Becky’ll kill me if I don’t leave you alone with it for awhile.”

“Leave me alone with what? You getting me a Tickle-Me-Wiggly, Mr. Houston?” She was teasing, but there was something ominous about the way he was talking. She had to press back her nerves. If it was serious he would have said, she told herself. Mr. Houston wasn’t cruel. 

And he wasn’t. But it was still pretty fucking serious when he slid adoption papers across the tiny trailer table at her. Lex could’ve sworn her fucking heart stopped.

“You can still go to California, Lex,” Tom said softly, in that worn-through voice he had when he was trying to be gentle. “I’m not gonna take your dreams away. It’s just that this way you’ll have a home to come back to.”

Lex’s throat was full with feeling, burned by the sudden return of the heat of her old anger ( _ do you think I can’t do this on my own? _ boiling in her chest, burning, roiling), the soft, trembling vulnerability of gratitude, bitter with possibility, the sharp jut of doubt, the cold clot of relief slowly blooming inside of her.

“Just think on it, okay?” Tom asked, in the same low murmur. Lex nodded, swallowing. He pretended not to notice the wet of her eyes, and she pretended not to notice the way his hand lingered on the door frame like he didn’t want to leave them there. He patted it, reassuring, as if to tell it he was coming back. As if to tell them.

Lex stood up and did a loop of the trailer.

A home. A real fucking home. 

With parents who would take care of Hannah- parents she could  _ trust _ to take care of Hannah- and a bed to come home to at night and a door she could lock and a brother Hannah’s age that she actually got along with and a mom who wouldn’t scream at them for trying to do homework in the house and a dad who wouldn’t up and fucking leave and enough money that she would have some of her paycheck left over and a  _ home _ . A  _ real fucking home _ .

It’s been two days. Lex looks at the paper, and the spitting, furious thing in her chest unclenches, unwinds.  _ I can do this on my own _ , it protests.  _ I can do this on my own. _ There’s a voice, gentle and sunny, in the back of her head, and it sounds like Ethan when it says-

“You don’t have to,” she whispers, and lets the anger go. 

She signs on the lines she has to, badgers her mom into signing it, too. “It says Hannah and I can go stay with friends,” she half-lies, and her mom gives a keen, sharp-edged look before scrawling her name hard enough it almost rips the paper.

“You’re a shit liar, Alexandra,” her mom says, and there’s more than enough resentment there to make her feel as if she’s done the right thing. “But you’d only stick around for another year, anyway.”

“If that,” Lex hisses, defensive. Angry. There’s a part of her that rebels, screams that her mom should’ve fought. Should’ve tried to keep them. 

Most of her is just glad to go.

Hannah is already packed. She’s packed Lex’s things, too, so clever, so kind. Lex hugs her, kisses her forehead. “You know where we’re going?” She asks, and Hannah nods. “Are you okay with that?” Hannah nods. “You ready?”

“Mr. Houston is around the block,” Hannah says, picking up the secondhand suitcase Lex bought her last year. 

“I hope he knows what he’s getting into with you,” their mom drawls, looking up at them from the bed. “Trouble. You’re just trouble.” 

Lex flips her off.

“I love you,” she says flatly, taking Hannah’s hand. She doesn’t wait for her mom to reply, instead stalking out the door, closing it behind her, and starting out of the trailer park. She knows she’s walking a little fast for Hannah, but Hannah’s walking pretty fast, too, so neither of them slows down.

They’re both afraid that if they linger it’ll all disappear. Good things don’t last here, where everything is covered in a fine layer of cigarette ash and the asphalt is broken under their feet. Tom is waiting, leaning up against his car, and Lex feels an unruly rush of warmth, understanding for the first time what it’s like to see a father waiting to pick her up, and tears prick at her eyes. She swallows them roughly.

“Mr. Houston-“ she starts, and Hannah breaks free, all turmoil and flapping braids as she runs at Tom in a hug that he can just barely weather. Using her running start he lifts her up, returning the hug with a tight, wide smile that just hides the tears in his own eyes. Lex walks. “You’re a real sap,” she teases him, as she drifts up behind her sister. He says nothing, just reaches out to pull her into his side in a one-armed hug. 

They must look like a real family, Lex thinks, Hannah hoisted up high in his arms like she’s not thirteen and too heavy for that shit, Lex pressed into his side like the aloof teenage daughter he never had. Well. Until now. Tim hops out of the truck, strawberry-blond and snappish, reaching up to tug on Hannah’s shoe.

“You’re coming home with us for good, this time, right?” He asks, and Hannah nods into Tom’s shoulder. “Cool. Your shoes are untied.”

Hannah doesn’t say anything. Tim begins to tie her shoes together before Tom catches him and makes a goat like noise Lex assumes means “stop.”

Lex just breathes, overcome. 

“You comin’, Lex?” He asks, settling Hannah in the passenger seat. He turns, looks at her, narrows his eyes and reaches out a hand. It’s warm on her shoulder, and she trembles under it. “You okay? Lex?” She turns, violently, and hugs him with the force of ten years’ denied childhood. “It’s okay,” he says, soothing, rubbing a hand over her back. “It’s okay, Lex.” 

She believes him. 

She sits in the back with Tim, who uses her hands to help him with cat’s cradle, and offers the occasional input between Tom’s drawling and Tim’s motor-mouth discussion of how she and Hannah would get the guest rooms. Hannah says nothing, which is a good thing. Hannah’s the happy kind of quiet, the kind where Lex can feel her humming with a smile too intense for her body. She hasn’t been that happy since Black Friday. Since they got their golden ticket. 

Lex’s fingers curl in, ruining Tim’s web of string.

“Lex?” He asks, and she sniffs, shakes her head, pastes on a smile. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says. He doesn’t believe her, she can tell. “I’m fine,” she insists, narrowing her eyes at him. 

“Sure,” he scoffs, and begins untangling the thread around her fingers. “You’re just as bad a liar as dad is.”

“Tim, leave your sister alone,” Tom warns him from the front seat, and Lex feels a tremulous, terrible softness in her chest. Is this what being a part of a family is like? Is this what it means to be normal? It almost doesn’t feel real, all of this. It feels even less real to get out at Tom’s house, to see Becky standing on the porch, still in her scrubs, hands in her coat pockets, smiling. It’s all too much. 

Lex feels… anything but normal. And it’s fine. For the first time, it’s fine.

Tom wasn’t lying. Just after the first week he and Becky start discussing travel plans with Lex and Hannah- and that alone is enough, for Lex, that they ask Hannah, too- and asking about California. There’s a part of Lex that knows that California was never going to be anything more than a dream, a part of her that knows that the dreams she was carrying were destined to stay dreams because California wasn’t perfect like that, was never going to be all she wanted it to be. There’s another part of her that needs it, that’s dark and painful and bitter about it. Ethan died for it, and she needs- she needs to see it. Even if she doesn’t stay. Even if this time she’s only there for a day or two, she needs to  _ be there _ . 

She and Hannah leave on the tenth. They want to be back by Christmas, after all. Now that there’s a home behind them, waiting. A mom and a dad and a brother, safety and certainty. Now that they have something to come back to. Hannah settles in next to her in the passenger seat, Ethan’s flannel wrapped around her too-small shoulders and his hat clutched in her hands. Lex goes over the checklist in her head- Hannah, food, blankets, enough money to cover emergencies, jumper cables, antifreeze, quarts of bottled water, phone chargers, a generator, a radio, three pounds of CDs, Tom’s largest wrench (for bludgeoning), and a first aid kit that Lex is half-certain could rival an actual ambulance, courtesy of Becky. 

“You ready?” Lex asks, looking Hannah right in her eyes. Hannah looks away, aside, up, then back at Lex. She nods. Swallows. Tightens her grasp on the hat. 

“We are coming back?” She asks Lex, and there’s more than a little worry in her voice. There was a time Lex would have said no. She would’ve taken Tom and Becky’s money, their shit, everything and run. She would’ve run as far as possible.

“We’re coming back,” she says, and she means it. Hannah smiles. “We’re coming home after this.”

They drive in silence for a few hours after that.

It takes a lot longer than she and Ethan had thought it would to get to California. Even longer to get to the coast. They take Ethan’s car- it survived the fire, somehow- and it feels right. It feels good, in a painful way. Lex tries not to linger on it. Lex drives and drives and drives. She and Hannah sleep in the car even though Tom said they could get hotel rooms, because it feels just enough like the trailer to be familiar. When they make it to the coast proper, Lex winds her way impatiently out to the shore. California is different. It’s so bright- everything is painted in sun and swept by the wind. There’s a stretch of street that drops off to a rocky slope, a beach rich with abalone shell and sea glass. Hannah takes one look and starts to happy-shake, humming with energy and excitement.

“You want me to go out with you?” Lex asks, smiling despite herself. Hannah grabs a plastic bag from the floor under her seat and hops out.

“No,” she says softly. “I can do this alone.” What she really means is ‘ _ you need to be alone _ ,’ and Lex is grateful as well as annoyed. Hannah drops her shoes on the floor, skips down the hill, clambers over the rocks and out onto the sand. Lex sits there, in Ethan’s car, and watches the seagulls pick fights over fries. She listens to the waves, the irritating, melodic call-and-response of yelling children and seabirds and the rushing of the wind in her ears. She inhales kelp and sea-rot and sunscreen. She thinks of the sun. She thinks of Ethan. 

She cries. 

Lex doesn’t miss him, exactly. She’s not the type. She doesn’t yearn for him like a phantom limb, and she doesn’t want to scream about how unfair life is now that he’s gone. She feels like he’s still there. In the ways that matter. He saved Hannah. He saved her. She runs a hand over the passenger seat. It’s warm, from the sun, warm like Ethan was, and she takes it in like she’s been starved of it her whole damn life.

He’s there. Maybe not in the cliché “guardian angel” bullshit way, maybe not in the “he lives on in your heart” condescending way, but Ethan is there. She doesn’t feel alone. She doesn’t feel like this was all for nothing, or that she’s wasted her time. She looks out at Hannah, picking up sea glass and talking to herself, and she feels a weight drop from her shoulders. 

They made it. She and Hannah and Ethan. They made it to California. And behind them, waiting, is a family- a father, a mother, a brother. Lex nods, biting her lip. “We did it. We survived the crisis. Well, I did. We did.” She looks out again, at the ocean, vast and blue-dark, impenetrable. She thinks about Drowsytown, and the dreamless sleep of the dead. She thinks about Moscow, and the mall, and air raid sirens. She looks at Hannah, thinks of Tim’s thread, Webby, the man with the gun. There would be plenty of crises to come. That’s fine. Lex is ready this time.

Lex pulls out the map. Puts an X through Monterey. Traces their path back to Hatchetfield.

It’s time to go home.


End file.
